Another vid to make you gasp and/ or retch.
The spiderman in question is Dan Osman and this was the climb that made his name. He ascended 400 feet in 4 minutes without a safety rope near Lake Tahoe in the USA.
Dan Osman
Osman was known for pushing the limits. He threw away all aspects of a conventional lifestyle to devote himself to his sport and in the process he came up with a completely new one.
In 1989 he was attempting to place a single bolt in the rock face of an especially difficult move. He fell 50 times whilst roped until he finally managed to secure the bolt. Osman discovered that he found the falls more thrilling than pulling off the climb.
The sport he came up with had a few names – free falling, body hurling, rope jumping – but they all amount to the same thing. A person jumps from a great height attached to a rope. The rope stops your fall before the fatal moment. So far, so bungee. But a bungee rope absorbs the energy of your descent, Osman’s system used a conventional climbing rope which, without careful placement of anchors, pulleys, pre-stretching of the rope and the correct body position, would tear someone to pieces.
Osman performed hundreds of jumps of this type, plunging up to 650 feet at a time. Coaxed by Osman, other people sampled the rush but not many came back for more, it was just too dangerous for them. A young climber was killed trying to carry out a similar jump. His preparations weren’t as fastidious, a rope stretched beyond its intended length and he slammed into a rock wall.
In 1998 Osman arrived in Yosemite intent on making a record-breaking jump. Over the course of a week his jumps became higher and higher – nearly 1000 feet – until his final jump.
He called friends and told them he was ‘going big’. He leapt out into the fading daylight and was killed when his rope snapped. Subsequent investigation revealed that a slight change in the jump angle caused the ropes to rub together and fail.
He left behind a young daughter and a discipline that hardly anyone else dared try.
